Emotional Understanding

Provision and/or strategies: approaches, adjustments and specific interventions expected to be made by settings according to the ages and stages of the CYP

Universal

• Ensure predictable routines and clear expectations to support emotional security and reduce uncertainty.
• Ensure adults respond in a calm, consistent and attuned manner, noticing and responding to early signs of dysregulation.
• Provide access to appropriate spaces and opportunities for co-regulation and support self‑soothing strategies suitable to the CYP's developmental profile.
• Teach and rehearse developmentally appropriate self-regulation strategies, such as deep breathing or other calming techniques, to build independence over time.
• Model emotional literacy and vocabulary throughout the day and support CYP to do the same (e.g. acknowledging, validating and naming feelings, using visuals such as emotion charts, through stories, role play or scenarios).
• Provide opportunities for CYP to express themselves in a variety of ways.
• Embed opportunities for emotional learning consistently across daily routines and interactions.
• Ensure CYP are provided with time to pause, reflect and process emotions as needed.
• Support CYP to recognise and understand triggers and situations that may influence their emotional responses.
• Provide opportunities to support CYP to understand links between thoughts, feelings, body responses and behaviours.

Targeted

• Teach emotional understanding through explicit, structured strategies to support reflection and processing of emotional experiences, such as:
  • Scaffolding reflection on emotional events
  • Modelling emotion management
  • Prompting use of techniques
  • Revisiting experiences to link thoughts, feelings, bodily responses, and behaviours, supporting co- and self-regulation.
• Teach CYP to recognise and interpret internal emotional cues (e.g. physiological responses, early signs of escalation) to support earlier self-regulation.
• Provide planned opportunities to revisit and reflect on emotional experiences outside of the moment, when the CYP is regulated.
• Develop self-regulation by teaching self-calming strategies and positive self-talk for managing intense emotions.
• Provide graduated adult support (scaffolding, prompting and fading) to develop increasing independence in emotional understanding and regulation.
• Support CYP to generalise emotional understanding and regulation strategies across different contexts, adults and environments.
• Use targeted interventions such as:
  • Emotion Coaching/ Early Years Emotion Coaching Project
  • ELSA